


It Had Been a While, After All

by DancingWithWildWolves



Category: The Light Between Oceans (2016)
Genre: Angst, Breif mention of death, Gen, Memory, happy angst, teddy bear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 06:50:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7880725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancingWithWildWolves/pseuds/DancingWithWildWolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short piece, written as a practice of character, description and emotion.<br/>Bill Graysmark reminisces on his sons and thinks about his wife and daughter</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Had Been a While, After All

It had been awhile…  
The door swung open and a clean smell of crisp sheets and spring air enveloped him as he stepped inside. It was like the boys had never left – a hockey stick against the wardrobe, coats hanging on the rack. Violet was always cleaning up after them. Now, it seemed like she was tidying up after their ghosts.  
It was spring – almost four years after the boys had left home for the last time. The apple trees were in blossom, Tabitha Tabby was about to have kittens and there was hardly a nip of ice on the wind. Hugh and Alfie had been the perfect sons, Bill reminisced, charming, sporting and endlessly protective of Isabel and now they were gone.  
The oak tree that they had held frequent meetings under had long since died. It had fallen in a dreadful storm and not two weeks later they had heard the news of Hugh – dead, fighting on the French front. Less than a week later, the parcel with all of Alfie’s things had arrived. His harmonica had rusted with the copious tears that had been shed upon it over the years. The army issued badges stayed boldly and hatefully bright; what with the amount of times Violet had polished them.  
He gazed around the room, Violet kept it meticulously clean; two neat twin beds, covers turned down invitingly. A pair of checked pyjamas – blue for Alfie and red for Hugh – sat atop the midnight blue coverlets. The wardrobe was ever so slightly open – Violet had been cleaning.  
Her eyesight was beginning to go. There were miniscule streaks of dirt tracked on the redwood floors. If she could see them, they wouldn’t have been there. She had never done that before. He felt a great surge of affection and worry for his wife in that moment. He could clearly see in his mind’s eye her face when she heard of Alfie’s death. How her face had drained of all colour and how her quiet, iron will had failed her.  
She couldn’t cope. The house became filled with her woe and a weighted cloud of malaise clung to her withered shoulders. It had taken months but she had eventually awoken from her melancholy. She had seemed alright for a time but then, when Isabel married Tom and moved out to Janus, her condition deteriorated rapidly. She cleaned obsessively, baked the boys’ favourite foods and never seemed to stop thinking that they would come back.  
He sank to the ground – clutching a scrap of russet, furry fabric close to his chest. It was an old bear, missing an eye and dotted with raggedy patches of baldness. It had belong to Hugh and then passed on to Alfie when the older boy had, as a young lad of six, decided he was far too old for childish toys such as stuffed bears. Now any grown up knows that no one is ever too old for stuffed toys but when the Graysmark’s had attempted to explain this to Hugh he’d nodded in that very knowing way children have – that one where you know that they think you to be a complete fool. Only twelve years after he’d decreed himself too old for childish toys, Hugh Albert had passed away.  
Bill Graysmark buried his face against the bed clothes as violent sobs were torn from him by the rough hands of grief. He wept for his boys and for the men they would never become. He wept for all the grandchildren they would never bring home; for his poor wife who would always carry the burden of loss and for his daughter who would forever more think of herself as a sister. He wept for all of the lives affected by the war.  
People grieve in many different ways. Vincent van Gogh once said that, “The sadness will last forever,” and he was right. The light of little Lucy, little Lulu Lighthouse, had broken through the darkness and whilst not forgotten, the sadness had faded.  
It had, after all, been awhile…


End file.
